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I do have two sleeves, at last. And I have moved on to the sweater body (no photo- not much to see yet). But now that I have that cast on, I feel ok about the prospect of airline travel. My flight back to the heartland isn’t for a couple of weeks, but I think that this section should keep me busy for a while- especially if I spend most of my at-home fiber time spinning.

Am I the only one who finds the idea of flying without a knitting project troubling? Although I will only be away from home for 5 days, and I have not given hardly a thought to what clothes I might pack (or a present for the wedding couple) the knitting has been carefully planned. I have got the sweater body cast on, so – no worries (it’s on bamboo circulars which will hopefully not even be noticed as I sent my bag through the x-ray).

I’m taking the trip primarily to attend a family wedding- but no travel would be complete without a wool tie-in, right?

So, one day I’m there I’m planing on going a bit south to visit Gram, who will not be able to attend the festivities. And, as luck would have it, Little Country Acres is just a hop, skip and jump away from Gram’s present location. So, I’m going to visit! Yea!

And here is this weeks spinning:

From left to right; brown-gray Romney navajo plied, my Lincoln, mohair & Romney experiment, and Romney plied with Shetland.

Still not sure how I feel about the one in the middle (but it’s still damp from the wash, so I guess I should give it some time, eh?) It’s really different from what I usually spin, but I wanted to try my hand with some mohair I had sitting around. What I really want to learn how to do is a fine, brushed mohair yarn. Something good and fuzzy.

This was the closing act on Saturday night. I just stood there and marveled. We didn’t even get the rain. Just the rainbow.

It has been an amazingly beautiful weekend- and a three-dayer to boot! We got a lot done around the homestead, but as you can imagine, we’re pretty pooped.

I kind of hoped that I was going to getting some swatching done for the zipper edge of the Denisee-ized Urban Aran, but that has not come to pass. I even have a friend’s zip-front cardigan on loan to examine in detail and use for inspiration. But it hasn’t even made it out of it’s bag yet. And I have approximately 1.5 hours of my waking weekend left. Dag.

I also failed to complete my second sleeve on time (had set today as my goal), but I suppose it’s not a tragedy, as I probably won’t have need to wear this Very Toasty sweater until maybe October or November.

My one fiber-y accomplishment for this past week is another skein of Gershom the Ferndale shetland. Such a handsome boy.

And there is another reason I’ve had less fiber time this week. We’ve got a visiting pup.

Sam is the King Charles Cavalier Spaniel of our friends who are off getting the royal treatment in Frankfurt, Germany. Now Sam is not any trouble at all. He gets on fine with Syd and Bruno, seems to have adjusted to rural life pretty easily, and is as cute as can be, but it does mean I have 50% more tummy to rub on a regular basis. So I’ve been a little tied up making sure all the boys get the attention they require.

Hot.

It’s been hot HOT HOT!

What you’re looking at here- on the right- is a 92 degree temperature recorded at about 4 pm yesterday. Just above it in the photo is an indication of the max temp from earlier in the day- approx 97 stinkin’ degrees. Yeeks!

It was much more tolerable in the living room- where I sought refuge from the insane heat of the afternoon, and knit some sleeve:

This is a fun knit. Cable interest, but not so much that you have to think about it. I memorized the repeat after a couple times through, and now it’s pretty relaxing work.

I know I’m getting ahead of myself, but I’m really looking forward to the shoulder construction stage- I think this will make a really nice EZ seamless hybrid.  And that pattern/scheme/construction technique is just so clever.

Doing this mod required changing the cable on the sleeve a bit. You might have noticed that the pattern photo (previous post, below) shows paired cables on the sleeves, just like on the front.  After looking at the gauge and the cable chart, it became very clear that the double cable was going to be way too wide to be a shoulder saddle. So I decided to just do one cable on each sleeve, the one on the right turning right, and the one on the left turning left.  Ta- Da! Still balanced.

I’m a little nervous about the zipper installation,, but I think there are some tutorials online…Guess I should do some research.

It’s really nice to have a sweater in progress. Hopefully the heat will pass and we’ll get back to wool-friendly weather.

It figures, that the one time I set my mind on a sweater that someone else thought up- it would be one that is out of print and not available on most store shelves.

I was starting to think that I was gong to have to buy the leaflet on Ebay and wait for it in the mail. But hoping against hope, I stopped by one of my LYSs, and sifted through all their baskets and stacks of pattern sheets and booklets, and just when I was about to say “when”, I stumbled upon it:

The Urban Aran- Patons “Street Smart” booklet #500989.

Ah- sweet relief! I don’t have to figure out and chart those cables on my own! I can just figure out how I want to modify it, and get started. Here are the materials (a sampling, anyway):

And here is my little gauge swatch (Isn’t it cute?) It really is square- it just looks warped in the photo. I think that the reason I’m so enamored of this swatch is because it just looks so pristine and neat and tidy, and I can remember when the fleece it’s made from was dirty and stinky and laying out on the driveway after I hauled it out of the feed sack it was stuffed in. Quite a transformation!

And I think it’s going to make a gorgeous sweater-